The 120 Days of Sodom or: The Romance of The School for Libertinage / Being an English rendering of Les 120 Journées de Sodome done by Pieralessandro Casavini, with an Essay by Georges Bataille

Marquis de Sade, DAF; Pieralessandro Casavini, pseudonym of Austryn Wainhouse, tr.

Published by The Olympia Press, Paris, July 1954

Condition: Very Good. Paris: The Olympia Press, July 1954. First Editions, 2 vol set, scarce. 16mo (7" x 5"); [publishers note vii-x] essay 11-37, 39-312 [9]; 313-575pp. Salmon dust jacket folded over plain white wraps. Printed on heavy wove paper by Mazarin, Paris.

Covers rubbed along edges with shallow chips / tears at spine ends with minor loss. Both volumes printed on back cover “Printed in France, NOT TO BE INTRODUCED INTO THE U.K. OR THE USA “

No writing nor marks nor tears, pages unmarked: clean and crisp. Binding is sound, both volumes are square and tight.

First English-language translation of de Sade's unfinished erotic / pornographic novel, written in secret while he was imprisoned in the Bastille, based on the 1953 French edition by Jacques Pauvert. This is the Olympia Press two-volume first edition: Bibliographer Patrick Kearney notes an Olympia catalogue claiming the two-volume edition was a limited printing, though any limitations are unknown, and speculates the two editions were intended for different markets, with "the one-volume edition on thin India paper for easier smuggling into England and the United States, and the.two-volume edition on heavy wove paper a relatively small printing struck off for domestic consumption in France" (Kearney p39). [Kearney 1.9.1].